One of the more famous paintings of the medieval Ming dynasty, which
ruled China for about three centuries, is that of a court attendant holding a rope
around a giraffe. An inscription on the side says the animal dwelled near "the
corners of the western sea, in the stagnant waters of a great morass."
According to legend, the giraffe was found in Africa, along with zebras and
ostriches, and brought back with the grand 15th century expeditions of
Zheng He, China's greatest mariner.

More than half a millennium later, Zheng has become a potent symbol for modern China.
In 2005, the country marked the 600th
anniversary of the seven voyages from 1405 to 1433 undertaken by Zheng's
vast "treasure fleets" with nationwide celebrations; the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in
Beijing dramatized his explorations from Southeast Asia to the Middle East
and the shores of Africa. On Feb. 26, China's Ministry of Commerce
announced it was funding a three-year project with the assistance of the
Kenyan government to search for Ming-era vessels that had supposedly
foundered off the East African coast. "Historical records indicate Chinese
merchant ships sank in the seas around Kenya," Zhang Wei, a curator for a state museum, told China's official Xinhua news agency. "We hope to find wrecks of the fleet of the legendary Zheng He." (See pictures of China's investments in Africa.)

There is more than historical curiosity behind these new efforts. For
centuries after his expeditions, Zheng  a Muslim eunuch  slipped out
of public awareness, obscured by the rise and fall of new dynasties. Talk of
his exploits was revived briefly at the beginning of the 20th century as the
fledgling Chinese republic sought to build a navy in the shadow of imperial
Japan. But experts say his place as a patriotic national hero has been
truly cemented only in the past two decades, parallel with China's
geopolitical rise  and the growth of its significant economic presence
in many African nations and countries around the Indian Ocean.

The legacy of Zheng's voyages  involving hundreds of ships, some
exponentially larger than the three captained by Christopher
Columbus decades later, in 1492  is being invoked by the Chinese as historical proof of
the difference between China's and the West's roles in the world. Though
the unprecedented display of maritime power was meant to extend the Ming
dynasty's reach over a network of tributary states, Zheng rarely resorted to
the type of violent, coercive measures taken for
centuries by European colonizers, especially in Africa. "Zheng's a nominal symbol of China's peaceful
engagement with the world," says Geoffrey Wade, a historian at the Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore who has translated Ming records
pertaining to the voyages. "With him, it's like the Chinese have an
ambassador of friendship  a sign that they aren't going to hurt
anybody." (See pictures of the making of modern China.)

In recent years, though, Beijing has come under criticism for an approach to Africa
that is perhaps more bloodless than it is cuddly. China's support of
autocratic regimes, from Zimbabwe to Sudan  where Beijing effectively
built up an oil industry from scratch  has exposed the Asian
giant to accusations of turning a blind eye to human-rights abuses as it
goes about securing natural resources and political influence. China
has pumped billions of dollars into infrastructure projects throughout the
continent, tying up key contracts in resource-rich states like Angola and
the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yet as total annual trade between Africa and China has surpassed $100
billion, Beijing has won its fair share of admirers too, not least among them
many Africans whose quality of life has been improved by an influx of cheap
Chinese household goods. China has also established a network of "Confucius
Institutes" in various African cities to disseminate Chinese culture,
while more and more African exchange students are attending Chinese
universities. A flotilla of Chinese warships is part of an international
operation attempting to curb piracy off the shores of Somalia. "This discussion of Zheng He is being carried out in China at a
higher and more expensive level not just to boost the glory of his personal
story," says Barry Sautman, a specialist on China-Africa relations at Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology, "but as a particular cog in
China's projection of itself into Africa."

Although the aura of Zheng's expeditions may somehow bolster China's
budding soft power, it's unclear what lasting impact the visiting fleets had on medieval Africa. No durable trade ties were left in place. And while
stories linger in Kenya's Lamu archipelago of a light-skinned community
descended from shipwrecked Chinese sailors, the population there retains no
trace of Chinese customs or language. "Not much endured beyond the legend,"
says Sautman. Indeed, scholars like Wade suggest the voyages themselves
were something of an "aberration" in the wider context of Chinese foreign
policy in that era, which for centuries was far more focused on staving off the threat
of invasion along its fragile land borders.

Moreover, though Beijing plays up the voyages as a triumphant Chinese
adventure, the journeys had a distinctly Muslim character. Zheng practiced Islam,
as did Ma Huan, the main chronicler aboard the ships. It's likely they
were guided to their many ports of call, such as Malacca, India's Malabar
coast and Malindi in Kenya, by Muslim pilots of Arab,
Indian or African extraction. "They were essentially following maritime
routes that had been in use by people in the Indian Ocean for ages," says
Wade. Many academics argue that the popular Arab-Persian tale of the
Seven Voyages of Sinbad, littered also with snippets of Indian folklore, was
derived from the real travels of Zheng He  making the mariner as much a
pan-Asian protagonist as a Chinese one.

No matter the many layers of myth surrounding Zheng He, the Chinese are confident
they'll uncover a Ming-era wreck near the Lamu archipelago, where bits of
Ming ceramic ware have surfaced in the past, and that it will be their legacy that gets burnished when they find it. A team of Chinese
archaeologists is expected to commence work in July. It won't be
alone  last year, following a visit to Kenya by Chinese President Hu
Jintao, a Chinese state petroleum company won concessions to explore more than 100,000 sq
km of Kenyan waters for oil. That will be theirs too. Africa, after all, holds more for
China these days than just exotic animals.